Eating: Red Shallot

19/01/2015

One lazy night, when we felt like naughty food but our wallets were too slim, we dipped into the Entertainment book and decided on Red Shallot.

The interior is a little threadbare, with an attempt at a modern style. I noticed straight away a great example of design compromising functionality in the bowls they had set up with chopsticks threaded through, (please see above for example). I like things functional yet pretty so seeing this caused an eye twitch.

Since it had been a particularly long week at work, we both felt like being greedy, and decided on fried Basa fillet with coconut sauce to share, with one Pad Thai each.

The fish looked amazing, but was not as great as we had hoped. The Basa fillet had an excellent crunch but the flavour of the fish was spoiled by the overwhelming oil flavour from the batter on the outside. The quality of the fish was questionable as it felt mushy and undercooked right in the centre. It's like the consistency you would get if you didn't completely thaw out your fish before deep frying it. The coconut sauce was made of a generous amount of desiccated coconut, coconut milk and a few bits of chilli. The flavour was not one that improved with time, as the more you ate the more fatty it felt, without anything to help cut through the oil from the outside crumb.

Recently I've been preferring my vegetarian versions of my favourite noodles. Unfortunately this is one of the poorer versions of vegetarian Pad Thai I've experienced. The firm style tofu looked like it was meant to have a crunchy exterior but was gooey, and potentially undercooked. The Pad Thai sauce was tasty but was much too wet, making the noodles soggy.

My better half chose the seafood pad Thai, but half way through stopped eating the prawns. He described them as tasteless, and once again questionably undercooked. Do you notice the same pattern I noticed? Just to be clear we didn't experience any gastroenteritis after this dining experience, but I'm not one to place myself in a situation where there is the potential for illness.

In conclusion:

My one dinner experience at this restaurant was not one I would remember fondly. Other people seemed to have better experiences here, but based on my one night I wouldn't recommend this place to my friends or loved ones. The tastes here are average in the Basa fillet with coconut dish, and the two Pad Thai dishes. The quality of the food is questionable, as the texture is not one I would equate to food cooked to an acceptable eating standard.

Perhaps you might have a better experience here than I had, but it's not an experience I would personally repeat.

Red Shallots
680 Glen Huntly Rd 

Caulfield South, VIC 3162
Ph: 03 9528 4026

Eating: Yering Station, Yarra Glen

Yering Station

It's a beautiful restaurant space with high ceilings and large windows giving a wonderful dining atmosphere. The girls got all dressed up and had a sumptuous lunch here.

The complimentary bread and garlic spread was definitely a great way to start off the meal, the garlic spread was had a smooth and creamy finish.

My dish of the crispy skin barramundi, beetroot risotto, smoked mussels and baby leeks, was satisfactory overall. The fish was well cooked and moist. Unfortunately my particular fish was overcooked on the bottom. The promised crispy was a disappointment as it had more of a chew then a crunch. The overall flavours of the dish were a little plain. Originally the beetroot jelly, and beetroot risotto confused me as the jelly packed a raw punch to it, whereas the risotto was plain. Only when I mixed the jelly with the actual risotto did the flavours balance out.

The dish overall wasn't a terrible dish, but when you take into account the $40 price tag, it's not a dish I'd spend that sort of money on again.

The rest of the group had an overall positive experience but were not amazed by the food.

Entree: Roasted quail with pork stuffing and shallots. The breast was slightly overcooked, and was not deboned. The overall taste was good.

Entree: Wilhelmina rainbow trout, scallops, spring peas, yuzu. The girls found this one to be refreshing, with the pea puree providing a smooth and creamy texture.

Main: Duck breast, parfait, charred chorizo, cumquat gel. The duck meat was tender with a crispy skin.

Main: Blue eye, charred cos, buttermilk pomme puree, puffed sesame seeds. The fish was well cooked, but slightly bland flavours.

Main: Pumpkin and goat’s cheese cannelloni, manuka honey veloute. This was a tasty dish, but was lacking a large pumpkin presence.

Main: Eye fillet, roasted kohlrabi, horseradish, marrow, croquette. General consensus was that this was the best dish of the lot. The beef was well cooked with the creamy fatty marrow making it more decadent. The croquette was also a delicious addition with bits of pulled pork, lifting the dish to the next level.

Side: Thick cut chips, truffle hollandaise. One of the highlights with a crunchy exterior and fluffy interior. There is good distribution of the hollandaise sauce on the chips.

2013 Yering station village off dry riesling. Light and sweet fruity tastes, but not too sweet. I'm not a huge wine drinker but this was a refreshing glass.

In conclusion: I personally wasn't impressed by the dishes presented here. Once you weigh in the cost of each main and the time it takes to get here I wouldn't be persuaded to come back to this area just for this restaurant. 

If you've never been to this area before and want to do a day trip out to the region then it may be worth a drop in. I would recommend the eye fillet or duck breast with a side of chips.

Yering Station

38 Melba Highway

Yarra Glen 3775

Victoria

(03) 9730 0100

Snapshot of PAXAUS 2014

It's been a while since the weekend that was PAXAUS 2014. For those who don't know, it's a convention for all things games and game related. It only began last year, and this year it outdid itself at the Melbourne Convention Centre.

The excitement of PAXAUS for me lies in the almost festive and carnival like feel as you walk through the waiting hall and enter the garishly lit cavern that is the Expo hall. Brands blazed in bright spotlights, booths manned by developers, screens set up with demos. All these things induce head twitches left and right, as my body is swept along the aisles between booths. Too much to see and gape at. Isolated cases of surprise overwhelming body odour, that leave you cramping and gasping.

I don't know if you can, but I hope you will feel from my photos a little of the vast crowds that flock here for 3 days of the year.

There were many attempts this year to convert me into a LoLizen? LoLinite? LoLicon? with gifts of free codes. Cards against humanity proved so popular that they sold out of the base game on the Friday, with all expansions completely gone before the end of the convention. That in a nutshell friends is a snapshot of what the expo hall is like.

My favourites from the Expo Hall were in the ANZ Indie area.

Nippy Cats a nifty cute game, where you play as the ominous finger in control of a bag of catnip. Your role is to keep as many cats entertained for as long as possible without letting any of them get their claws into your little pouch. The challenge comes in the shape of little kitties zooming about on screen. You need to have an excellent spatial awareness and quick reflexes. Needless to say I have some of the first and none of the latter.

Merchants and Mercenaries is a PC game that is described to me as a cross between Settlers of Catan and Civilization. As I've never actually played Civilisation, I can't comment on that description. The game objectives is upgrade your little province faster than the other players and build a castle, then hold it for a certain period of time to win. How you go about upgrading your town is your own problem. You can mine, chop wood, farm, etc. and then go interact with the local market. What you sell or buy affects the prices in the near future, I think this phenomenon is called economics...

I managed to break it a few times, but it felt like it had a lot of promise and I actually enjoyed creating my own little land and messing with the other comp players.

This was the first year I attended panels. The ones I was lucky to make it to were well organised with short wait times, with a good variety of speakers. The Dragon Age one went right over my head, but I managed to grab some shut eye to charge up for the next few hours of PAX. Whilst the Cosplaying Celebrities panel started out very interesting with insight into the Cosplaying world that was all new to me. But towards the end the awkward audience questions became tedious and repetitive.

Through the Expo Hall, you'll find yourself in wide open spaces that is the Freeplay area. There is the huddle of the BYO PCs, the fences that separate the freeplay consolers, the retro gamers, and freeplay PC gamers, from the Boardgamers. As you enter the Board game and Minatures area, your parched soul is allowed to roam free among the rows upon rows of immaculately chic black draped tables. The Board game library is the shining gem is this oasis.

This is where the majority of my time at PAX was spent. Borrow any game that is available, and make yourself comfortable for the next few hours.

We met up with our board game group and tried out every game that we had ever had a burning desire to buy. The sort of games that we would have snatched up and paid good rent money for, if it wasn't for the slivers of our brain that also controlled things like budgeting and the judgement of food unfit for consumption.

Some board game highlights were, Kings of New York. Similar to Kings of Tokyo, but not different enough to justify purchasing. Stone Age plays like the Euro game Agricola but the art is beautiful, and the design of the map is a gorgeous exercise in, well, design. One Night Ultimate Werewolf plays like a version of the time old Mafia game, but on speed and fuelled by laughter. Camel Up is hilarious as well, with everyone making stupid bets on the best camel race of the previous previous last week!

I love the generous nature of fellow board gamers. Those who offered to teach us the rules of new games, those who were so happy to share what they love to play and why. Board gamers are such a social and easy going bunch. We are all poor together with our fortunes not in bonds and stocks, but in board games.

There's so much more to say, but I think this has been enough to trick... I mean, fool... I mean, persuade you to attend next years PAX. :)

It is exhausting and your feet ache, and you will get a headache, but it's all worth it.

I leave you with the cosplays I enjoyed. Either because the guy in the medieval armour reminded me of the game that doesn't take itself too seriously, Chivalry: Medieval Warfare, or just cause. Thank you to the cosplayers who let me photograph them.

Disclaimer: I was not paid or bribed in any form to endorse any of these games. I attended PAXAUS as a member of the Public and I write this piece as a reflection of my own personal experience of the event.